Chapter 55

It’s probably happened to you at least once. You’ve had a premonition. You knew exactly what was about to happen before it happened. You knew you were going to win the raffle just before your ticket was called. You were thinking about someone the moment before they phoned or emailed or texted. You had a feeling something dreadful or wonderful would happen on a particular day and it did.

If listening to your intuition results in something of monumental significance, it changes you. Of course it does. How could it not?

Once, my grandmother was pinning washing on the clothesline. She had her beautiful baby, my mother, in a basket at her feet. Everything was lovely. The baby cooed and blew bubbles. The magpies warbled. Then my grandmother sensed danger.

How could there be danger?

She looked down just as a red-bellied black snake slithered across her precious baby’s stomach toward her tender neck. Grandma reacted instantly, instinctively. She grabbed the hem of her baby’s smock. She hoisted her out of the basket in one swift movement. She spun her above her head like an Olympic discus thrower.

“I don’t think you really spun me above your head,” Mum would say.

“Excuse me, were you there, Mae?”

“Yes, I was there, Mum.”

“Very funny.”

“No wonder Mae’s brain is scrambled,” Auntie Pat would chortle.

“I just knew, ” Grandma would say. “I sensed it. I had this dreadful feeling of doom. ”

“No, you didn’t,” Grandpa would argue, “you heard something, like a rustle, or you caught a tiny movement out of the corner of your eye.”

Grandma would cross her arms, stick out her bottom lip, and say nothing more until Grandpa said, “All right, Lizzie, you’re right, you knew, you just somehow knew.”

He wasn’t silly.

Then he’d get his cup of tea.

—

Before my father was struck by lightning, my mother was ordinary.

Well, not to me. She was charismatic and clever, clearly the prettiest of all the mothers I knew, with the most beautiful complexion, and she was the first mother on our street to learn to drive, which made me very proud, but what I’m trying to say is she wasn’t “unusual.” She spent her days on domestic tasks: sewing, cooking, laundry, and gardening. She swore when the magpies dropped mulberries from our tree over her clean washing on the line. She cried over the brick-sized romance novels she borrowed from the library.

Yes, she read palms, but it wasn’t serious. She was mimicking Grandma. She never charged a fee and if she did a reading for her girlfriends they normally ended up in fits of giggles. I think Mum predicted wicked things about tall, dark, handsome men. She read my tea leaves, because I begged her to, but it was like asking her to tell me a story. I don’t think either of us truly believed it.

We had the same superstitions as most people we knew. We knocked on wood. If we spilled salt we threw some over our left shoulder. If we cracked a double-yolk egg we said, “Someone is having twins!” and we never checked if anyone actually did have twins. We crossed our fingers for luck. It was all in good fun.

But after Dad died, everything changed. All our superstitions got serious.

I don’t know. Maybe Mum really did foresee his death.

But you’d think if she truly believed Dad would be struck by lightning she might have suggested he avoid rock fishing on a day with the possibility of a summer storm heavy in the air.

A heads-up might have been helpful, Mum.